Liberal Democrats

A close finish and a new beginning

Fresh-faced and a little shell-shocked, Nick Clegg yesterday won the leadership of the Liberal Democrats by the smallest of margins. The tight result added to the awkwardness surrounding a contest that has left much about the party's future undefined. The new leader spoke of his instinctive liberalism, but his opening talk of "ambition and change" carried unfortunate echoes of promises from other leaders, in other parties. David Cameron or Tony Blair, too, might have warned that "we have stopped imagining a better society". Mr Clegg has a sharper purpose than that. As he builds his team over Christmas, he needs to show it.

When they voted, Liberal Democrats did not really choose between two candidates marked by strong ideological difference, but between two personalities, neither well-known. The close result does not point to some great division within the party about its purpose, but a debate about who was best placed to express it. Mr Clegg won that debate, but only just, chased to the wire by Chris Huhne, who showed more bite. He will now expect - and deserves - a substantial job, such as home affairs. A decisive result would have given Mr Clegg a stronger platform from which to launch his leadership but party indecision will only count for something if he falters. After three leaders in two years, there is surely no appetite inside the Liberal Democrats for more discussion of the leadership, something that Mr Huhne accepted yesterday in a speech of some generosity.

Under Mr Clegg, the Liberal Democrats will seek to be liberal, a word he used repeatedly yesterday. His predecessors would claim to have done the same thing, but Mr Clegg's view of liberalism is a harder-nosed, more individualist, less interventionist, one. He sees the state as a possible enemy to freedom as well as a necessary friend: "No more government knows best," as he put it yesterday. This is territory that the Conservatives, too, want to occupy - hence Mr Cameron's cheeky weekend offer of a green progressive alliance. Liberal Democrats are convinced that their commitment to liberty is real, while the Conservative belief in things such as decentralisation is artificial. That may well be true, but Mr Clegg's great task now will be to convince the public of it.

More than anything else, Mr Clegg must define himself as something other than a second Cameron. He will not get far by hoping that the Tory party is found out. He will need to dive into the news with the sort of audacity Vincent Cable showed during his temporary leadership. That has raised the bar for Mr Clegg, which is good. Daring can pay off. He needs to speak confidently about the issues where his party obviously stands apart - such as its internationalism and commitment to Europe. It can be no bad thing for a major party to be led by a well-travelled linguist who sees the world as something other than a threat to Britain.

Some around Mr Clegg will want him to show energy, dashing from opportunity to opportunity. He will have to do it to make his name and raise his party's poll rating, which has fallen dangerously. But he must not exhaust himself through stunts at the cost of coherent leadership. He has some time before the next election, and can expect to fight the one after that as well. That will require serious re-engineering of the party's structure, which, as Charles Kennedy warned yesterday on these pages, can suck away initiative. He will need to think about the campaign strategy, led by Lord Rennard, which has focused on target seats.

Most of all, though, the new leader will have to break through the frustration of third party politics, which is to be heard only intermittently and often to be misunderstood. In good health and when true to themselves, the Liberal Democrats defend values that other parties neglect. It is in Britain's interest that their new leader does well. He should be outspoken, cause trouble and follow his liberal instinct.